The spectacle of the US House of Representatives has prompted many pundits to rummage around in the US’ congressional history, hoping to find some solace in earlier moments of political mayhem. US House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s ordeal might be unpleasant, they point out, but at least it is not in the same league as the battle that began in 1855, when it took the House 133 ballots to find a leader.
That draws the wrong lesson from the past. McCarthy’s quest for the speakership is altogether different than the one that unfolded so many years ago — and not simply because he has only endured a dozen ballots.
In reality, far from reflecting political dysfunction, that earlier struggle marked the successful birth of the Republican Party. McCarthy’s woes, by contrast, are symptomatic of a political party in steep decline.
Illustration: Yusha
In the late 1840s, the US entered a period of significant political fragmentation, much of it driven by the debate over slavery. Small but disruptive third-party movements dedicated to the anti-slavery cause began to wield outsized influence during this decade, challenging the two major parties: Whigs and Democrats.
As the historian Corey Brooks has shown, these anti-slavery parties — the Liberty Party and later, the Free Soil Party — landed critical first blows on the existing political order, disrupting the political duopoly and forcing politicians to take a stand on the question of slavery. The rise of the nativist Know Nothing Party, also known as the American Party, which pushed for restrictions on immigration, also sowed chaos.
In 1854, Democratic Senator Stephen Douglas managed to push the Kansas-Nebraska Act through Congress, opening up these territories to slavery. This legislation effectively destroyed the existing party system, with Democrats sustaining huge losses in the north as voters rebelled against Douglas. At the same time, anti-slavery Whigs abandoned what was left of that party, forming the Republican Party.
At this point, it was not clear what would emerge from the wreckage. Anti-slavery forces ranged from ardent abolitionists committed to racial equality to racist whites who hated slavery because it posed an economic threat to free labor. Disaffected former Democrats, ex-Whigs and last, but not least, members of the new, untested Republican Party vied for supremacy.
This struggle would first take shape on a national stage in the struggle to elect a speaker of the House in 1855. The men who took their seats that December belonged to many different political blocs. While Democrats no longer enjoyed a majority, their opponents had yet to achieve anything approximating a unified front.
Something funny happened as the failed ballots piled up. The protracted struggle to elect a leader of this motley collection of political refugees had a clarifying, unifying effect.
This process began as anti-slavery forces rallied around a former Massachusetts Democrat named Nathaniel Banks who had flirted with the Know Nothing Party, but was considered a reliable ally in the battle against what many called the “Slave Power.”
The anti-slavery forces behind Banks repeatedly fended off challenges from both the Democrats, who hoped to splinter the emergent Republican majority, and the Know Nothings, who still aspired to become a national political party. As Banks held on to his lead, the speakership election became the crucible in which an eclectic, disparate group of “anti-Nebraska” politicians became a whole greater than the sum of its parts: the Republican Party.
Many in the anti-slavery camp understood this at the time. One anti-slavery correspondent told Banks that “the more votes [for speaker] the better,” because “the lines between the parties” would necessarily become “more firmly consolidated.”
Republican Representative Joshua Giddings echoed this sentiment, arguing that the battle in 1855 “got our party founded, consolidated and established,” making it “of far more importance than the election of a speaker.”
This observation, corroborated by modern political scientists studying this episode, underscores how transformative this battle became. When Banks finally triumphed in the 133rd ballot, he moved to consolidate his power as the de facto head of the new Republican Party.
Banks struggled to appoint anti-slavery men to key positions — clerk, sergeant-at-arms and printer — that formerly played a larger role in the day-to-day operations of the House. Nevertheless, he had carte blanche in committee appointments, and here he stacked all the major committees with anti-slavery loyalists, effectively making this issue a key source of party cohesion.
In 1856, the New York Herald said that “the anti-slavery element is the governing power of the House committees.”
Moreover, many of the men appointed to these positions were the most promising “stars” in the emerging party, giving them a venue where they could begin to cultivate national reputations.
Although House Republicans suffered a temporary setback in the next election cycle, their single-minded focus on battling slavery helped them drive the American Party into extinction, positioning Republicans for political supremacy.
By the eve of the Civil War, political scientists Jeffrey Jenkins and Charles Stewart said that “the Republicans had become both flexible and pragmatic, requiring a basic goal — opposition to slavery expansion — while allowing considerable freedom in other areas as a way of building a majority party organization.”
Which brings us to the drama that has unfolded in the House. As Kevin McCarthy struggles to placate a radical, nihilistic wing of his party, he would have to jettison what little remains of the core values that once defined the Republican Party, making effective governance increasingly difficult.
In the 1850s, each failed ballot brought the Republican Party one step closer to becoming a lasting reality. This year, each failed ballot only serves to underscore the fragmentation in a once-powerful political party that has become a shadow of its former self.
Stephen Mihm, a professor of history at the University of Georgia, is coauthor of Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance.
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